Banking on it ... !!

I have a savings account with 2 or 3 banks but the features provided by each account are like chalk and cheese. But I take a liking to one of these accounts.

The ATM pin number is 6 digit instead of the conventional 4 digit pin. I am not sure if this is a boon or a bane but I like it for the simple reason that someone in possession of the card will have to try harder to crack the pin. If you forget to collect your card from the ATM machine and someone else comes after you and tries to withdraw money from your account, he/she will not be able to do it. This is due to the fact that you are prompted once again for the pin on every cash withdrawal. I like this feature a lot. The next is the Sweep In/Sweep Out facility. This is the most impressive.

If the balance goes beyond 20000, the remaining amount is converted into a Fixed Deposit. For example, if you have 50000 in your account, 30000 will be converted to Fixed Deposit for 6 months and you will get the prevailing FD rate on this sum (it is 8.5% now). This may seem like a forced FD. It is not. The beauty is the reverse operation called Sweep In. Supposed 30 K out of the 50K is converted into a FD. Now, you have 20K available for withdrawal. Lets assume that you remove 19K. Now you have only 1K available. Lets say that due to some X reason, you need some cash in excess of 1K, for example 2K. When you attempt removal of 2K, 5K out of the 30K kept in FD are swept into your account for removal (in fact, sweep in works in such a way that you will always get your cash, no matter what amount by reducing the FD amount). So what happens to the terms and conditions of the FD? Nothing changes except the FD amount. Your FD amount will now be 25K. The duration for FD does not change. The 5K that was swept in will fetch you the interest according to the bank savings account rate. Now, if somehow your balance increases again and goes beyond 20K, it will again be swept out albeit as FD2 since the duration for this will be different. Lets discuss a scenario.

You have 50K in your account today. 30K will be swept out as FD1 for the duration Aug 27, 2008 to Feb 27, 2009 (6 months). You remove 19K from the remaining 20K. Now you have 1K left. You remove 4K. From FD1, 5K will be swept in to your account. Now you will have 1 + 5 = 6K available for removal. Since you want 4K, you will get this amount and 2K will remain in your account while FD1 now has 25K. Now, you deposit 20K in your account on September 1, 2008. So the balance goes up to 22K. Out of this amount, 20 K will be swept out as FD2 for the duration Sep 1, 2008 to Mar 1, 2009. If you now attempt to remove some amount more than the available balance, money from the lower valued FD will be swept in ... in this case FD2. The best thing about the sweep in/sweep out feature is that you can view your swept out FDs on the ATM machine as well ... !!

I have found this extremely beneficial in the last 18 months since I get almost double the interest than other banks.

The customer feedback process is fictional. That was a firm belief until this bank came along. They have a dedicated customer feedback section on their online banking section (I know most of the banks have this). The difference is that you will actually get a call or a personal mail (within 24 hours, sometimes they called me within 5-8 hours and it is not an auto-generated mail). For example, I had written to them regarding the scarcity of ATM machines in Pune. They replied with the upcoming ATM machine sites and today I see these machines at all the places they promised. There is one right in front of the housing society where I stay :). Another feature (I am not sure if this is a feature) of theirs is that if you pay your petrol bill via their debit card, there is some surcharge deducted from you account after 3 days. This used to happen here too. But they credited the surcharge back at the end of the month. In between, they stopped doing this. So the surcharge was only debited and not credited back. When I wrote to them about this, they immediately called me and informed that they have changed the policy and it is in the process of going back to the previous policy. And Yes, they were right. Now I don't have to pay surcharge for petrol, although they have warned be beforehand that the new policy may come into action later.

I also have my locker with them. Whenever I visit the branch and tell them that I want to use my locker, they will leave whatever they were doing and guide me to the locker room. I have seldom taken more than 5 minutes at the branch. When I forgot my net banking password, I called their customer care. Firstly, the line was not busy. It was answered immediately. They told me that they can tell me the new password right away on the phone. I liked it but I didn't opt for it. Instead I asked them to courier it to me. They said it will take a maximum of 3 days. The new password was at my doorstep 2 days later. Marvelous ... !!

These are some of the features I like about them.

On the flip side, there are some cons too. The minimum quarterly balance amount is 10K which is a bit high. Plus, all banking activities which demand some banking/service charge/tax may end up emptying your pocket more than other banks. For example, I wanted to make a bank guarantee for myself and they were charging me at least a percent more than most other banks.

But the 2 activities mentioned above are not the regular banking activities and the points scored by the features are more than these cons.

Plus, this is my highest profit earning stock and due to this reason, I had opened an account with them.

Question : Guess this bank ;)

Cheers ... !!